Happy New Year to all of our past, present and future solar broker friends. Sun Source Solar Brokers celebrates its seventh year providing solar brokering and energy consulting services in Marin Sonoma, Solano, Napa and San Francisco counties.

A Quick Update on the Definition of Solar Broker.

Solar brokers are now falling under varied definition s and not all are the same.Some solar brokers actually broker solar panels and ancillary equipment, similar to how an automobile broker would help a consumer shop for a car, by not only comparing the prices of the actual product, but helping the client actually find the cheapest price on the product itself. Whereas, some brokers will only shop price for the client and not perform the procurement of materials, since, in some school of ethics, this may be seen as “partial”. Meaning, “how” can a broker represent the consumer in shopping for the lowest price, while making money on the actual sale of the materials; albeit from a different provider?

Inevitably, there may be some favoritism with solar vendors, and the customer will never really know if he or she is getting fair representation and price savings or just a gimmick that looks that way.Alternatively, at Sun source Solar Brokers we only represent the clients shopping interest through energy consulting for the best price, terms and conditions of equipment and installation, but we do so through the installers themselves and we do not receive a commission on the sale of the materials. Although we do receive a commission for the impartial energy consulting from the winning bidder of the solar installation, this is part and parcel of any fee that any solar installer would have to pay for salesmanship within the sales cycle, so they’ve budgeted for this cost anyway when they hire an inside sales person to solicit a sale. But the difference between our energy consultant and the inside solar sales rep is that we truly are impartial, since we do not make commission on any equipment sales, nor do we allow it. Purely, we’re there to consult. Pre-qualify and help our clients perform due diligence before they consider making a purchase. Because we submit our clients represented proposals to three solar installers, we remain impartial bec asue it doesn’t matter who the client chooses, just so long as it’s the RIGHT installer for the job; the license, qualifications and reputation are stellar.

The one BIG difference is that we will help our clients access the lowest cost on solar materials if they choose to shop on their own, but still use one of our local installers. We know there are some folks who just want to do the research and buy their own equipment, and that’s okay. We can still help them draft the “request for proposal” to locate the best price per watt for installation.